Samburu Video

Well, now with the publication of the Samburu video, I’m caught up on the African locations. Samburu National Park lies in Northern Kenya. It's home to some rare species that are quite difficult to fine elsewhere. You can see the beautiful Grevy's Zebra is good numbers. They are larger than the Common Zebra and have much finer black pinstripes that are gorgeous. You can also see Reticulated Giraffe at Samburu, in my opinion, the most attractive Giraffe species. There are lots of Antelope species including the uncommon Gerenuk that looks like a cross between an Impala and a Giraffe and the Oryx with it's majestic long straight horns. The park's scenery is also stunning with tall surrounding hills, steep canyons and the Ewaso Ng'iro river running through it. The river is actually to border to Buffalo Springs National Park, and you can crisscross back and forth between the two. Most of this video was filmed in Samburu, but at least 25% is from Buffalo Springs. All three big cat species are present in the park and there are lots of Elephants with a unique red coloration caused by dusting themselves in the reddish soil.

You can view the video in the “Wildlife” tab of this website, or directly on my Vimeo channel at: www.vimeo.com/fishtales/samburu

Rhino Time

Now that I’m settled in to an apartment in Bangkok for a short break, it’s time to catch up on some post production. I just finished an edit of some of the Scenes from Ol Pejeta Conservancy. As a brief recap, Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Northern Kenya has one of the highest concentrations of rhinos remaining in Africa. I used to recommend Lake Nakuru for Rhinos, but when it was hit by a big flood a little over a year ago, all of the White Rhinos in the park were moved to Ol Pejeta for safety and I suspect they will remain here. The Conservancy is privately owned and managed and is very aggressive in it's protection of endangered species such as White Rhino, Black Rhino, Reticulated Giraffe and Grevy's Zebra. The conservancy is huge, rivaling the size of some of the National Parks which is pretty amazing when you consider that it is privately owned and the entrance fees to visit aren't really very much more than the Kenyan Parks System fees. I filmed around 300 scenes during my visit and nearly half of them were Rhinos. The Conservancy is located in the shadow of Mt. Kenya, the second highest peak in Africa. In addition to Rhinos, I had some nice Lion encounters including a couple of feedings. This is the only game park on my entire tour that I didn't film a single Elephant! I saw some. There apparently is a pretty good sized population. But with so many rhinos around, I just didn't put much of a priority on the other big gray guys.

You can watch the film in the “Wildlife” tab of this site, or directly on my Vimeo Channel at: www.vimeo.com/fishfales/ol-pejeta

Masai Mara Video

Masai Mara was very productive for us. We had more predators (and scavengers) feeding than any single place I've been. The weather was also interesting with alternating sunshine and torrential thunderstorms. You could almost see the Mara greening up as the first rains arrived. We also had larger herds of Zebra and Wildebeest than you would normally expect at this time of year due to the lack of rain the the Serengeti causing half of the migration to turn around and stay in the Mara this year.

You can view this video here on this website in the "Wildlife" tab, or directly on my Vimeo channel at www.vimeo.com/fishtales/masaimara

Amboseli Video

Here are a few scenes from Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya. We were fortunate to get one really good morning with excellent views of Mount Kilimanjaro complete with a fresh coating of snow on the summit. Even though the park was very dry, and the rains are just about to begin in earnest, there is still lots of wildlife near the areas with permanent water. Loads of Elephants, one of the largest populations in Kenya.

You can view the video in the "Wildlife" tab of this website or directly on my Vimeo channel at: www.vimeo.com/fishtales/amboseli

Samburu National Park

From Ol Pejeta we traveled further north to Samburu National park. Samburu is in a fairly arid region. You are as likely to see a herd of Camels as a herd of Cows (though I’m not sure what they do with the Camels). Samburu is home to a number of species that are either rare or nonexistent in parks to the south. You can find Reticulated Giraffe here in good numbers. These Giraffe have a particularly handsome pattern. They look like what you think a Giraffe should look like. Also present are Grevy’s Zebra, an endangered species. They have finer stripes, are larger, have bigger ears and are adapted to arid regions. I think they are much more attractive than the Common Zebra that you see everywhere else. Also present in the part are Gerenuk. They are a species of Antelope that look like a cross between an Impala and a Giraffe. They have extremely long necks for grazing higher up in the foliage than other species can. Samburu has plenty of Oryx, something you generally only see in dry regions like Etosha in Namibia. The Ostriches in Samburu are Somali Ostrich. They have light blue legs and necks instead of the pink of Ostriches in the south. We arrived a couple days after a torrential rainstorm that caused much flash flooding in the area. Everything had dried out sufficiently to get around without problems and lots of fresh green grass shoots were sprouting everywhere. My first day had interesting scenic clouds, and my second day had the bluest sky of my whole trip. So the first day was good for scenics and the second day was better for animals.

First morning sunrise from my camp. Looks like the start of a good day:


Good clouds for scenics:


Lots of branching palms. Some of them look like Candelabras:


More nice clouds:


Somali Ostrich have pale blue legs and necks:


The Vulture Guinea Fowl looks like someone attached a vulture’s head onto a Guinea Fowl body:


The Elephants in the park have a very reddish coloration:


Mom and baby. This is a wide angle shot, they were VERY close to the 4x4:


Grevy’s Zebra and its baby:


Lots of Dik Dik in the park:


Gerenuk look like they are part Impala and part Giraffe:


A pair of young Oryx in a mock battle for mating supremacy. A couple older males look on to see what talent is coming up:


A Reticulated Giraffe in the shade of an Acacia:


A hunting Cheetah:


A Leopard with it’s kill in a tree:


The trouble with getting a drink at the river is that you get your paws muddy:


Yawn, must be time for a cat nap:


I saw more camels on the way out of Samburu than Cows:

Ol Pejeta Conservancy

I’ve just finished a couple days in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy near Nanyuki in Northern Kenya. Ol Pejeta is a privately owned conservancy and covers an area al large as some National Parks. It straddles the Equator, you zigzag back and forth across it numerous times in a day. It has the largest population of Rhinos in Kenya. Both Black and White Rhinos are present in addition to 3 of the last 5 remaining Northern White Rhinos. If you want to see Rhinos, Ol Pejeta is definitely the place to go. I saw in around 15 each day (lost count). The park also has Reticulated Giraffe and several other uncommon species. When its clear (not often this time of year), you have a stunning view of Mount Kenya, the second tallest mountain in Africa, looming over the park. I had two extra special experiences on my last afternoon. We found 2 male and 2 female Lions with a kill (a Baboon). We also saw the newest addition to the Rhino population. He was born about 3 weeks ago, but his mother has been keeping him back in the bush out of view. Today, she had him out on the plains for the first time.

The very first scene I filmed in Ol Pejeta was this Rhino. Lots more followed


This is a shot of the park’s newest baby Rhino and his mother with the peak of mount Kenya in the background:


The bird in the foreground is a Bustard. It’s the largest flying bird. The pair of White Rhinos in the background, however, cannot fly at all.


This is a weaver bird working on its nest at the top of an Acacia tree:


These weaver birds have colonized a cell tower. They don’t seem to have an adverse effect on phone reception, but I wonder how many of their eggs get microwaved:


A bridge in the park requests Elephants to only cross to cross two at a time. I’m not sure if they comply, but the bridge is still standing…


A couple Warthogs Tussling:


Lions fighting over the last bits of a Baboon. The left male is making off with the face:


In the last five weeks I’ve filmed several species of big Cats, but this is the biggest:


An interesting bit of early morning sky and a silhouette of Mount Kenya:

Ngorongoro Crater Video

I've uploaded a little bit of video from our trip down into Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. It was a very scenic day with interesting cloud formations ringing the Crater rim, but leaving the center of the Crater mostly clear. Ngorongoro is a great place to shoot wide angle scenic with animals in the foreground and the steep rim in the background regardless of the direction you face. So this video is a little more weighted toward scenic than wildlife. You are only allowed to spend a half day in the Crater to keep vehicle congestion down but you can see a lot in even such a short visit. And with it being the "off season" it sometimes felt like we had the whole Crater to ourselves.

You can view the video in the wildlife tab of this site, or directly on my Vimeo Channel at www.vimeo.com/fishtales/ngorongoro

Serengeti Video

Well, I've caught up on uploading my blog posts from three weeks of Safari with Brad. I only have one more day in Nairobi before I head out on another week of Safari in northern Kenya, so I don't think I'll get caught up on my post production backlog.

Today I finished a short piece of video from our Serengeti Safari and have uploaded it. You can see the video here on this site on the Wildlife Films tab, or on my Vimeo channel at www.vimeo.com/fishtales/serengeti

Hopefully, I will get Ngorongoro Crater finished tomorrow.

Masai Mara

Getting to Masai Mara from Amboseli is no easy task. First you have to traverse the 100 Km of nasty road back to Namanga. Then, although it would probably only be another 100 Km to Masai Mara if you could just continue on to the west, there is no road in that direction. So you must go north to Nairobi, overnight, then go southwest about the same distance including another long drive over extremely poor road to get to the park entrance. All told, ti takes nearly 2 days to make the transit of a distance that would only take a couple hours in the US. From Nairobi, you climb the escarpment, descend into the great rift valley, cross it and then climb back out on the other side. The views at the tops of the escarpment are quite nice.

Masai Mara is the northern terminus of the great Wildebeest (and Zebra) migration. The southern border of Masai Mara is the northern border of the Serengeti. Animals move freely back and forth across the Kenya/Tanzania border without bothering to have their passports stamped. That’s a good thing because usually over a half million animals make the migration. That would totally overwhelm customs and immigration. Normally, this time of year, there would not be large numbers of either Zebra or Wildebeest present tin the Mara, they would be in the Serengeti. But this year, the early rains failed and when the migration crossed the Mara river and there were no nice fresh grass shoots that they were expecting to munch on, about half of them said “screw this” and crossed right back into Masai Mara. This sort of explains why there didn’t seem to be as many animals as I was expecting in the Serengeti. But for that lack, it made the Masai Mara much more interesting. In places, there were scattered small herds of Zebra and Wildebeest as far as you could see.

We arrived at Masai Mara on the first day of the April Rains. We had a couple of tremendous thunder showers that dumped a ton of water on the parched land. It made some of the low spots fairly boggy and you could see the plains greening from day to day. We had more “interesting skies” and I did a couple nice time lapses of thunderstorms rolling across the plains. I had some of my best ever carnivore feedings including Lions eating a Zebra, Vultures eating a Zebra and a stray Masai Cow, and Cheetahs eating a baby Wildebeest (from very close).

Since we arrived on the day the rains started, we had some very interesting skies at times:










It was also very good for shooting iPhone Panoramas:




Lots of these beautiful lizards near the Mara River:


There were a ton of Zebra in the Mara, way more than you would expect at this time of year:


One thing that seems unique to me in the Mara is that the plains are scattered with far more bones of predator kills than I’ve seen anywhere else:


We had lots of feeding action, here are some Vultures working on a Zebra carcass:


We found five Cheetahs (Mom and 4 nearly mature cubs) feeding on a fresh kill of a baby Wildebeest:


We had two Lion kills about a half mile apart. One was a Hartebeest quite well hidden in the bush, and the other was this Zebra that was very close to the road. We spent about an hour and a half with this pride as they fed, rested, fed some more and finally drug the carcass out of view. There were 18 Lions in the pride:


It’s good to be king:

Amboseli National Park, Kenya

My primary objective in visiting Amboseli National Park was a shot of Mount Kilimanjaro. Though Kili is in Tanzania, the southern border of Amboseli is right at the base of the mountain and it has the best view. The problem is that Kilimanjaro is covered in clouds about 90% of the time. It is the highest mountain in Africa topping out at 19,341 feet (5895 Meters). It is also the largest free standing mountain in the world. Our guide, Tony, met us at the Tanzania/Kenya border at Namanga and we drove East over an extremely bumpy dirt road about 100 Km to the park entrance. Then another 25 km across the park to the opposite side where our campground was to be. As we crossed the area, the clouds became more and more “interesting” (ominous would be a better word). Of course the mountain was sheathed in clouds but the broad expanse of the base was clearly visible. We had a couple small thunder showers as we crossed the park, but nothing major. Just as we neared the far gate, we started to see occasional tiny glimpses of the summit. By the time we finally got cross the park, it was nearing sunset and time to setup camp for the night.

By some stroke of luck, the clouds broke overnight and we were greeted with a spectacular clear view of the mountain in the morning. To top it off, the stormy weather of the previous day had left Kilimanjaro with a fresh coating of snow at the summit. That held out for a couple of hours allowing me to get several different classic views of the mountain with various wildlife and scenery in the foreground. That turned out to be the best viewing of the three days we were there, but it was well worth the journey.

Amboseli has the best population of Elephants in Kenya, and we were easily seeing well over 100 per day. Also lots of typical African wildlife such as Zebra, Giraffe, Antelope, Wildebeest and Cape Buffalo. We saw a few Lions and one Cheetah. The park has quite a few Hyena and we had some nice sightings on the last day. Amboseli has an area of permanent wetland, and that’s where you find the animals concentrated during the dry season. Now that it is starting to rain, the dry lake bed will fill up and the animals will spread out more.

This is what it looked like as we arrived in the park and made our first pass through. As far as I knew, this might have been the best view of Mount Kilimanjaro I was going to get:


This is the view from our campsite the first morning in the park. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven!


These are the shots that I went to Amboseli to get. A clear day with a fresh snowfall on Mount Kilimanjaro:








Some of the clouds look very nice in B&W:


The thunderstorms looked nice as panoramas too:


Here are some Elephants coming in from the dry section of the park to graze and drink in the marshes:


The Elephants love to wade in the marshes and feed on the green vegetation:




Lots of wading birds in the marshes, here are some Crested Cranes:


This Crane speared a tasty rabbit. We watched (and filmed) it as it struggled to swallow the bunny whole. It took it a few tries, but it got it all down:


Quite a few Hyenas in Amboseli:


This male Lion is taking an afternoon snooze after a big meal:


Can’t think of a better “office” to work on the old blog:



On the road into the park from Namanga, you occasionally see donkeys walking along the roadside carrying a load of water jugs. Sometimes they are completely unattended. They seem to be autonomous. Sort of an African version of Google’s self-driving cars. I think they must be relatively intelligent to carry off this task. I wonder if this is where the term “Smart Ass” originated?